"Let us be judged by our actions." DID YOU KNOW that the first women’s Club in Australia was the KARRAKATTA CLUB founded in Perth in 1894. One of its founding members was Edith Cowan who of course later became Australia’s first woman parliamentarian. The Karrakatta Club became heavily involved in the campaign for women’s suffrage, successfully gaining the vote for Western Australian women in 1899, thus making the state third only to New Zealand and South Australia in enacting this legislation. The club maintained a strong reading circle and continued to strive for literary enlightenment.

It was quick to align itself with the Lyceum Club movement, which spread internationally as a result of the first Lyceum Club founded in London in 1904. Next Tuesday I will be guest speaker at the Karrakatta Club Literary Lyceum Club lunch.

Last weekend I returned to my birthplace,
the no-longer-little town of Donnybrook, to talk about my book, Finding Jasper. Much has changed and, not
surprisingly, there were far more new faces at my talk than old.

While wandering around my host’s beautiful
property the following day, I ran into a medley of butterflies milling around the
garden. They were immediately recognisable, their black, white and orange patterned
wings striking against the surrounding greenery. They were, of course, those fellow 'wanderers', the Monarchs, I had been reading about recently and they were playing
hard-to-get. They couldn’t seem to make up their minds what they were supposed
to be doing. Basking for a few seconds on a blossom or a leaf, then flitting
here and there in all directions as if half-drunk. Perhaps they were confused,
the sudden onset of winter being disguised by the warmth of the sun and the
strong Autumn colours yet to fall.

At last one was captured, photographed and then
duly freed. Always one for making
connections, I was reminded of two great novels I had the privilege of reading this
year. Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour,
which I
wrote about in March, and Amanda Curtin’s recently released Elemental both feature live Monarchs as
a subject of biological observation as well as a metaphor for human behaviour.

Whereas the Monarchs are, from the very
first page, the dominating issue in Flight
Behaviour, they appear only fleetingly as a motif in Elemental, with the author saving her focus until their final
release at the end.

There are more parallels yet to come. Both
novels revolve around impoverished young women who live in the confinement of small,
uneducated communities where old customs, rituals and insularity prevail. Both protagonists
are redheaded; both predictably are social outcasts. In the case of Curtin’s
young fisher girl, Meggie Tulloch, just the colour of her hair is, by some
weird local superstition, cause enough to have her cursed.

It is not just their red hair that distinguishes
these young women in their grim and wretched lives; there is an inner fire and
intelligence that energizes them in their daily struggle, fueling a desire to escape
to a better world beyond.

I kiss the air. It spins around me with the rush of
something new, something that is white and clean and so real that I can touch
it with my fingertips, feel it on my lips, on the skin of my face. It gusts
through my hair, pulling it at the roots, and I am breathing it into me, this
wondrous something new. And suddenly I know that I will never be the same again
because I have felt freedom in my lungs.

But as Ginger
Meggie quickly discovers, this new world, the world of herring, is almost
as confining and defining as the last.

Soon it is all I am: red, wet, salted gutted, blood in
my eyes, scales on my skin. Fish hauled
from water into air and struggling to find a way to breathe …

The more pages that we turn, the more our
hearts go out to Meggie, feeling her pain, her unrelenting anguish and
oppression; always urging her on.

The years pass and life continues to turn
its innumerable cycles despite the changes in Meggie’s life. Even when she
marries and lands safely on her feet in Fremantle on the other side of the
world, still she finds that love and happiness are as elusive as any common butterfly.

The stories and settings of these two 'butterfly books' are vastly different but certain similarities can be noted when
you place them spine-to-spine.

Amanda Curtin writes exquisitely. Now that Elemental is on the shelves, she will
soon be up there with Kingsolver. Curtin’s strength lies in the power and music
of her language, her various evocations of time and place. Just as rich and
convincing is the author’s ability to create a character, and the unforgettable
voice and resilience of Meggie Tulloch drawing in her family and the reader hook,
line and sinker.

I will be appearing in this event with Anna Solding, Kim Lock, and Caroline Wood from Margaret River Press.

Going with a small publisher to produce and promote your work can be an intimate affair– what are the benefits? This unique panel of authors and their small publishers will discuss how small publishers can often show a lot more care when it comes to their writers’ wellbeing and livelihoods.

My publisher, Caroline Wood, and I will be participating in 'A Day of Literary Feasting' organised by the Nedlands Library. This all day event celebrates writing with author talks, workshops and expert tips from professional publishers and writers. For more information and registration visit :

Earlier this year Walter Mason wrote a very generous review of Finding Jasper on his blog. At the time he asked me to be a guest writer for his Universal Heart Book Club. It has taken me a while but here is the posting.

The long listed authors will be announced on Thursday 11 April at 9am.

The short listed authors will be contacted in the coming month and will be announced to the public on Wednesday 5 June. The winners of both the Kibble Literary Award and the Dobbie Literary Award will be announced on Wednesday 24 July.

After writing a lovely review of Finding Jasper, Aussie expat and London journalist, Kim Forrester, very kindly asked me to be her "Triple Choice Tuesday" guest writer on her blog. This was to coincide with her focus on Australian literature for the month of April.

My "triple choice" involved writing about a "favourite" book, one that "changed my life", and one that "deserved a wider audience". Read on

Have you ever wondered what early 20th century Perth and its surrounds looked and felt like? Novelists Lynne Leonhardt and Ian Reid, and historian Jenny Gregory bring the Perth of yesteryear vividly to life in their new books.